PG medical and dental admission cutoff reduced to zero

CHENNAI: All candidates who appeared for the NEET PG 2023 are eligible to apply for postgraduate medical and dental courses even if they scored zero in the entrance test, the medical counselling committee announced on Wednesday based on the decision of the Union health ministry.

On Wednesday, the Medical Counselling Committee announced that the cutoff has been reduced to zero from 291 (out of total 800 marks) for the general category and 257 for people in the reserved category.

A notice put out by the Medical Counselling Committee said: “The qualifying percentile for PG courses (medical/ dental) for NEET PG Counselling 2023 has been reduced to zero across all categories.”

The National Medical Commission made the recommendation based on the discussions with the PG Medical Board on Friday.

“More than 8,000 postgraduate seats, clinical and non-clinical, in government and non-government colleges were vacant from across the country. The health ministry was concerned as 3,744 remained vacant after NEET PG counselling last year. It was unanimously decided to bring down the eligibility criteria,” said a senior member of the National Medical Council, who was a part of the discussions.

Last month, medical associations, including the Federation of Resident Doctors Association (FORDA) and the Indian Medical Association (IMA), demanded that the NEET PG cut-off be lowered up to 30%.

The associations argued that the medical entrance conducted by the National Board of Examination was tough making it tough for a large percentage of students to clear.

“This year there were more students than the number of seats. But seats are vacant because unlike in the undergraduate course, students want to wait for the speciality of their choice,” said former director of medical education Dr Edwin Joe.

The central counselling committee has announced that fresh registration and choice filling for round-3 of PG counselling will be opened again for candidates. “Candidates who have become freshly eligible can register and participate in round-3 of counselling,” the notice said. The candidates, who are already registered, will be allowed to edit their choices.

A fresh schedule would be released soon, the committee said.


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